April 22 is Earth Day.
Celebrate Earth Day with your students and talk about ways to appreciate nature and protect our Earth. What are some ways in which your students can help raise awareness on important issues like the environment?

April 30-El Dia de Los Ninos/El Dia de Los Libros (Children’s Day/Book Day)
Twelve years ago, writer Pat Mora had a dream that she put into actuality: El Dia de Los Nino/El Dia de Los Libros. Since that time many libraries and schools have participated in and celebrated Children’s Day/Book Day. Mora wants libraries, schools, and parents to help all children around the country rediscover the joy of reading. Use a video chapter and/or image to spark interest in reading with your students.

National Poetry Month
This month is National Poetry Month. Engage students in discussions and projects that will allow them to celebrate and appreciate the art of poetry. Use some of the resources below to help you plan a unit and reinforce language and literacy skills.

Help elementary grade students learn the parts of a plant through the program: Plant Parts and Their Uses, which uses visual and audio tools to help children learn.

Students often have difficulty identifying what they are seeing under the microscope. The Incredible World of the Microscope provides information about microscope use and slides that you may wish to have students review. Students can enhance their hands-on experience with live pond specimens by viewing the parts of microorganisms that propel them or allow them to feed in the short segment, “Locomotion in Protists: Ciliates” from Biology: The Science of Life: The Microscopic World.

DE Science
Get students doing a virtual lab, “Keep it Cool” on green school buildings in Discovery Education Science for Middle School. Don’t have Discovery Education Science? Learn more today.

Mathematics
Learning about economics and how money is used has become a critical skill for students. Use Discovery Education video to help students make sense of some of the things they are hearing about in the news.

Elementary students can be introduced to the concept of money in the video program, Learning About Money.

Middle school students can learn about how money came to be and how mathematics helps us understand how money is lent and borrowed at different rates in the segment: “Interest Rates: Borrowing and Lending Money” from the program Behind the News: Money.

From the Social Studies Perspective
Ask your students where do they think we would be had activists, such as Paul Revere, not resisted and acted against the British? By many historians, America was and remains the “great social experiment.” Use chapters from the videos listed below to explore just how unique America was and is.